Elisa Jane Carmichael’s work, a search for meaning is to absorb the abundance of beauty in nature, is now showing in Connections: MCA x Tate at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
Connections: MCA x Tate has been crafted around a selection of the co-acquired works. Providing a focal point in each gallery, they are shown alongside works from the broader MCA Collection as well as several new commissions. Inspired by the transnational nature of the MCA x Tate partnership, the exhibition takes as its guiding theme the ways cultural exchange and trade, travel, migration and diasporic experiences have uniquely shaped Australia. Connections: MCA x Tate also considers how artists use their work to address cultural frictions arising from British colonisation, sharing alternative viewpoints in an effort to catalyse social change.
a search for meaning is to absorb the abundance of beauty in nature, 2021, connects to Carmichael’s saltwater identity and culture. It centres on ancestral knowledge, matrilineal connections and a deep relationship to the Quandamooka lands and waters, which include Mulgumpin (Moreton Island), Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), the Southern Moreton Bay Islands and the mainland coast. Country and culture are present in the work, from its incorporation of natural materials that have been sourced on the artist’s ancestral lands to the intense blue of the cyanotype that is evocative of the deep waters that connect all across Quandamooka Country. Great care has been used in the artist’s handling of the natural materials. She has laboriously handspun the bark fibre into string and hand-washed the fish scales she stitches individually to the net and the surface of the cyanotype.
Elisa Jane states, “This installation captures the light and the spirit of those before us and the heart of our Saltwater Country Through the use of fish scales and talwapin, the hands of our ancestors are woven into a net of life.”
For more information, visit the MCA website here
Image: Elisa Jane Carmichael, a search for meaning is to absorb the abundance of beauty in nature, 2021. Fish scales, talwalpin (cotton tree), cyanotype, cotton, net 230 x 450cm, cyanotype 258 x 383cm. Photo: Anna Kucera. Courtesy of the artist and the MCA.